Haywire
by MandereLee
Summary: The problem with people like me was that my lies were easier to believe, because my truths were strange and incomprehensible. People were always afraid of things that they could not understand.
1. One

AN: Wow… I'm actually writing a reincarnation story! This is cool… well, for me anyway, hehe. And guess whom it's about? Now, I'll just give you one guess…

I figured that since many people considered Suboshi a psycho or mentally unstable, I thought, hey why not write about him where he actually deals with this problem? And pop came that story! Then I decided to jot down notes, and actually do research. I've learned so much just by planning this fic.

Mentions from Ryuusei-Den:

Basara- the guerrilla that Suboshi was in  
Tessoh- leader of Basara  
Chama Lee – Tessoh's assistant, and Suboshi's best-friend  
Toka – Tessoh's adopted sister

Major spoilers from the series and the twins' novel.

Anyway, the format goes like this:

_This is Suboshi._

This is Suboshi's reincarnation.

* * *

**Haywire**

_It had been sunny that day. Nothing bad was supposed to happen on sunny days. _

_I was sure my brother would have been proud of me once I got back to Kutou. If I was able to, anyway. This was the first time I really got to do anything for him. I was the type which took his love for granted my whole life. _

_So when Nakago questioned what I could do without my brother, it was sad to admit that I could not do much. I hated that Nakago was right when he said I wasn't strong enough to handle even at least one of the Suzaku warriors. He said it would be foolish for me to go straight into fight with any one of them. He said there was absolutely nothing I could do._

_And yet he told me about a village on the outskirts of Konan, and said that I could do whatever I wanted with that information. And so I did._

_Konan looked a lot healthier than Kutou. The trees, the grass, the stones, the sky. Everything looked as if it was alright. Nothing bad was supposed to happen on beautiful days like this, and in beautiful places. I knew it was not a coincidence that Kutou rarely had nice weather, nor looked like a tourist attraction. Some called it 'pathetic fallacy', but I had no clue what that meant. I just called it pathetic. _

_I didn't know whether carrying out Nakago's suggestion was a good idea. I never really trusted him in the first place, with my brother's expedition to Konan being his plan and all. I just never liked him either. The first time we met, he sent me crashing on the wall of Seiryuu's mausoleum. I only questioned his plan then. Imagine what would happen if I had done more._

_That did not matter to me right now. All I believed was that after I was through with this, everyone I cared about would be able to rest in peace, knowing that I had justified their deaths. My brother especially, but this little vengeance ran beyond just blood ties. Konan had been merciless to me, and so I should be to them too. Why… I hoped they had not forgotten about the hundreds of soldiers they sent to annihilate a small group of thirty troops only a few weeks ago. Thirty boys, fighting with only blunt spears, and wooden clubs, with nothing but their clothes on their back, against their well-trained and ruthless fighters. _

_Soi caused a terrible storm that time, but I felt as if it would have rained anyway even without her interference. It just suited the event._

_I didn't know why Tessoh had not decided to retreat. I didn't even know if Chama Lee really did betray us. All I remembered was that after the battle, Tessoh's shirt had been tainted as deep red as Konan's coat of arms, and he sputtered futile words of warning against the summoning of Seiryuu. In the end, he must have lost hope and changed his mind when he said we must use it to provide peace for the country. This was when I realized that for the past three years of my life, I had been mislead to think that Kutou was our own enemy. No… that day, I knew that it was another country that would soon destroy us._

_What were five 'innocent' lives, if that must be said, compared to the thirty that were destroyed that day? Who knew how many other anti-government guerillas they killed other than mine? Konan had no valid reason to do that, so I didn't need one to do this as well. In the same way that Basara was powerless against the troops they sent, my victims would also be powerless against me. It was my right to make things even, and after everything that they have stolen from me, they should at least be happy that my pay back did not include interest. _

_So Tessoh, Chama Lee, everyone in Basara… brother, this was for you._


	2. Two

The newspapers and the articles on the internet called me a very violent boy. I had read them a while back when I still had the time to. They said that I was merciless and heartless; someone who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time; probably a hitman or worse…; a young man who had been mislead, and had committed a horrible mistake; insane and evil; pitiful and in need of serious help; B.S.

All of them called me B.S., despite all the other contradicting statements about me. It was supposed to be for my own good. Under the youth protection law, my name was never to be displayed publicly on any written piece of work, or the newscast on the TV. So instead, they all resorted to using my initials. I often wondered how strangely funny it was that they turned out to be B.S. And sometimes, in the back of my head, I could almost see all those journalists, and reporters, and bloggers, and interviewers scoff at the humour of it. How pleasurable must it be for them to write those two letters down, perhaps thinking how rightfully it fitted me.

"So… let's see here. Who is Amiboshi?"

My doctor sat in front of me, an amiable smile plastered on his face, making his cheeks appear all that redder. His nose too. Actually, I thought that maybe his skin just had a few more shades of red than the normal person. He was kind to me, always seemed as if he was trying to be friends with me or something. But I thought he tried too much. I didn't know how someone who was over forty could be good friends with a teenager. Yet he tried, and I got tired of his zealousness so I just let it by.

"I don't know," I replied. "How in the world am I supposed to know who that is?"

The room I had here was different from any other rooms I had before. This one was very plain, simple, clean… uhm, _sterile_. So, so _sterile_. There was nothing interesting that would make me stay in this room, except for the bed when I got tired. It was ironic how they would spend all this time preparing a room for me, when obviously things like teenagers and clean rooms did not go together. But I guessed they'd figured that I really did not have anything to dirty it up with, so they still cleaned it. I wondered who was paying them. I certainly didn't. I didn't have any money.

And it was not like it was my choice to stay here. They were the ones who put me here. I hoped they were paying. I was sure my stay here wasn't free.

"Last time you said he was your brother," he replied objectively. His tone did not accuse me of lying, nor did it point out my naivety… nor my _condition_. I liked that about him, but I guessed it was his job to sound that way.

"No…," I stated slowly. "I told you before, I'm an only child. I have no brothers, no sisters, nothing."

I didn't even have any parents, but most people didn't feel bad for me. I had lots of guardians. Tons and tons of them, different ones every year. Sometimes I would get two different ones before the year was up. They would all keep me until they decided that I was not the child they expected, and gave me off to some other hopeful couple. A lot of people said it was my fault why they would not keep me.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, quickly jotting a small note on his book. He always carried a book around. And a pen. I'd never seen him without them. "I guess you were out of it, huh? That's alright. We can always continue this next time around." He got up from his seat, and collected his stuff from the table.

I rolled my eyes as he did. 'Out of it' was the nice way of him telling me that I had gone through another 'phase'. 'Phase' was what they referred to when I was not myself. When this happened, I usually didn't have any recollection of what I had done or said. When this happened, they told me, I was a very, _very_ different person.

I had this _condition_ ever since I was a child, but I had always been oblivious to it because people were usually afraid to ask me, and when they did, I had no idea it ever occurred. At first I thought they were joking, and then I thought they were liars. All of them were liars, and I was the only one who knew the truth. And the truth was that nothing happened.

Maybe I simply fainted.

They would ask me to remember many things. I had broken a vase, or I had crashed a bike. I had punched someone, or yelled at my guardians. I spoke in some odd dialect of Chinese, and that I was looking for something…they told me that I was always looking for something. And then when I was myself again, they'd be angry because I could not remember all of that.

In all my life, I had never searched for anything, nor anyone. However, sometimes, and this was one of my little secrets… sometimes, I could feel that someone else was looking for _me_. It was strange.

Anyway, it was only recently when something else happened that I finally believed that I really was sick, and that everyone was indeed telling the truth.


	3. Three

_The gray clouds looked like they were fat enough to swallow a flock of birds. I wondered why it would just not rain. It would have been better that way, because perhaps the sun would rise tomorrow then. Besides, it had not rained for a while. For a long, long while. The clouds just stood there as if they had nowhere else to go. They should go to Konan._

_There were dead plants crawling against the wall outside of my room. How they did that, I didn't know, and I became curious whether the dead could still move on their own. _

"_Suboshi, where were you?" _

_Lady Yui was in the room with me. She came and visited me for the first time since I had woken. They said I was unconscious for a couple of days. I guessed I should feel flattered that she decided to bless me with her presence. That was what everyone said. The priestess was a special person, and whomever she decided to be with should feel privileged._

_Funny that I did not feel any more special now than I did a few days ago. _

_I guessed she was here because she felt a little bad; one of her warriors was just killed without her even knowing him. And here I was, badly injured, again without her knowing about the plans that had got me in this situation. I guessed this was her way of getting information. I was sure Nakago would not tell her anything that she was not supposed to know. Otherwise she would not even be here._

"_I heard Tamahome did this to you…" she whispered. Lady Yui came closer to me to caress the bandages around my shoulder. I wondered what it felt like to touch one man and think of another at the same time. She was probably used to it. I heard she kept that Tamahome around for a few nights. I bet she was thinking about how badly _he_ got hurt. I bet she wished she could be with him right now like she was with me._

_I didn't reply, and instead I looked outside again. The dead plants seemed to be moving up the wall. _

"_You must still miss your brother, don't you?" _

_She mistook my silence for grief. The hurt over my brother's death was numbing, and since the rest of my body felt numb enough because of the anesthetics that they had given me, it would not be a lie to say that I could not feel anything._

_Lady Yui leaned in closer and embraced me, pulling my head to her chest. Something about her was intoxicating as I breathed in her scent. _

_I wondered what she would feel if she knew she had a murderer in her arms. Would she be scared? Disgusted? Passive? Liking, even? Because she obviously didn't mind being in the arms of another. I wondered if she knew about Nakago… It would be almost impossible for her not to. Nakago's reputation was well-known around here, especially in the palace. _

_In any case, I should not be talking as if I was any better than him. _

_There was a time, three years ago, when I was a very different person from whom I was now. I was shy, whiny, sickly, thin, dependent… I remembered when the three bitches I lived with tried to make me plough the soil, and something inside me just cracked. And all of a sudden, I was different. At that time, I simply passed it on as being rebellious and impulsive – who would have stuck around those three hags for so long anyway? _

_Nevertheless, my behaviour was not something I monitored, so naturally, I didn't think much about how I acted and why I did. But over the years, the roughness just escalated. I could not remember if I ever had an 'enlightenment', but the first time I noticed that I had changed was when Toka, the bitch, was attacked in the abandoned village a bit away from Basara's camp. _

_I didn't care much about the bastards who were trying to hurt her. They could have disappeared violently off the face of the world, and I could care even less. However, that time it was my brother with whom I was furious, for showing up abruptly after three years of leaving me. I even threatened to kill him myself, even though I was sure I would not have been able to do it. Then Aniki tried to convince me to leave Basara because the revolution would cause so much bloodshed. I didn't want to, and that was when I realized that I was a far cry from my old self. _

_Aniki had called me a sweet boy back then. He said I was sweet, and it was unlike me to make decisions like those._

"_Suboshi…" Lady Yui whispered. Momentarily, I had forgotten about her… which was strange. Since comforting me days ago, she had never left my mind. "How did all of this happen?"_

_I couldn't remember when anyone else had called me sweet. I remembered being called lots of names, mainly by the three witches, but they were not nice things like what Aniki would call me. It was a long list of cruel labels, and the list kept on getting longer. They sprouted from childish insults, and somehow branched out to more serious tags that would make my mother slap me across the cheek had she been able to hear me saying them._

_See, that was why I should not be acting like I was better than Nakago. The only difference between the two of us was that I did not lie. _

_So they could add cold-hearted, and merciless, and insane to that list, and I wouldn't care much._

"_Please, just tell me."_

_Even a murderer..._

"_What happened?" I finally looked away from the window, and up to her face. Her eyes seemed so desperate for an answer, and I felt so sad for her. _

…_but I would not be a liar._


	4. Four

"So… tell me about your paramour."

A girl my age with hair the shade of fresh egg yoke, and eyes like faded denim came up to me. She took the seat beside mine. I often wondered why she was here. It didn't seem like the right place for her. She probably had some mild case of Tourettes Syndrome, and her parents probably just gave up trying to take care of her, like mine did. Either way, she was normal enough compared to the other people I had seen here –compared to me. And I didn't think she needed to stay.

"I have no clue what you're talking about," I said.

"I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I overheard the Chinese expert translating it to your doctor last night," she answered excitedly. I didn't believe her when she said she didn't mean to do it. This girl had a way of going about the hospital without any of the nurses or the doctors knowing.

She continued, "You were saying, '_Lady Yui, Lady Yui! It's okay. Don't worry. Nobody's going to hurt you anymore. I promise nobody will hurt you again…_' as if you were comforting her after a horrible nightmare. But if you ask me, it sounded more like you were comforting her after you hurt her during a sexy romp." She giggled hysterically with her comment.

"Shut up," I told her.

I watched as more and more patients were assisted into the room. There were a few more minutes before our doctor would come.

I hated group counseling as much as I hated the trial. There was absolutely no reason why I needed to know about the problems of others, nor they needed to know about mine. My doctor told me that it was good because I got to learn from others, and that it was a nice change to be around other people. Yes, but I was hoping I would be around _normal_ people. It had been a two months since I first came to this place, and these group counseling still got me queasy. Just looking at everyone here in this room… I just felt like I didn't belong here.

"Leave me alone," I said again.

"Oh don't be so harsh!" She scooted her chair closer to mine and ran her hand up my thigh. "I could be your paramour if you want."

"Go away." I swatted her hands harshly and stood up.

"There's no need to be ashamed. I've heard enough things about you that you don't have to be embarrassed."

"Oh?" I knew she had her way around the hospital. If there was one person who knew more about the patients here more than the doctors, it would be her.

"Yeah. Of course! How could I not? Everyone knows about that family you supposedly murdered that night. It was all over the news!" she blurted. "But you don't have to worry. A lot of people are now angry because all the attention was on you, that any other suspects could have fled away by now. I heard they're investigating again, you know. Just in case."

No, I didn't know. And quite frankly, I didn't care much anymore. I ended up here, and that was all there was to it.

"I've heard that they're still interested in you, though… wondering what you've been doing here and stuff…" she continued.

"You hear an awful lot of things," I cut her off. "Are you sure you're not schizophrenic?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "Of course I'm sure! I know exactly what's wrong with me, and I intend to fix it. How about you?"

I strode over to the window and watched as few cars sped away on the street. The hospital was in some quiet part of the city, and nobody really went here. The girl followed me.

"Oh, I'm surprised you don't know anything about that," I spat.

She shrugged and stared at me intently. "Sure I do! I know they've diagnosed you with many, _many_ problems… what I meant is what are you going to do about them?"

What was I going to do about what?

She was wrong. They had never told me what was wrong with me.

This reminded me of that one time on my first week here. One of the nurses entered my room with my medication, giving me spiteful looks. She arranged the bottles angrily on my table, keeping as much distance away from me as possible.

The nurse told me, 'You ought to be grateful that they put you here, than let you rot in jail. And while you're here, you might as well make a good use of your time and start to repent. You should feel bad for what you've done.'

She went away after that. I've never seen her again, and only heard rumors that she was implicitly terminated.

My point was, she said that I should feel remorseful. But how was I supposed to feel guilty about something I couldn't even remember?

"I understand that you do have many problems…" the girl went on. "Your outrageous case is proof enough that you've got a lot of issues on your hand. I mean," she laughed but not out of humor. "Why would you kill a family you don't even know?"


	5. Five

_I had learned early in life about the inefficiencies of mother nature_.

_There were legends, hundreds of them, that told stories of how the gods had created the world, and created people soon after. The humans were supposed to nurture this land, and it would nurture us in return. _

_The problem was that the gods created too many of us too quickly, and because of that, there came a great scarcity in the world. There was not enough of anything for everyone. There was not enough food, water, shelter, land to farm, and animals to own. There was not even enough happiness, peace, hope, and lives to go about. _

_But humans were greedy and selfish, so the aspect of sharing would not work. There was no way a person would give up what they owned for another. Some people would do it out of kindness, but those were rare, few and far in between. And there was always a limit to what they could give… nobody here was a saint. _

_That's why when people became desperate, they had to steal. Like what we were going to do now with the Shinzaho._

_The idea of stealing fascinated me when I first came to Basara._

_That night when I was sold to Tessoh, I wailed my head off because there was a meteor shower. It pained me to know that there was no hope at all, and the meteors coming down like drops of rain seemed to mock my childish sadness. I hated it. _

_Tessoh took me inside his cottage deep in the mountains, and roughly pushed me on a makeshift bed. I covered my face with my arms and screeched the frustration out of my system, until I lost my energy and dozed off. The morning when I woke up, I felt a heavy weight thrown beside me. I saw two big iron balls connected by a rope that Tessoh was clutching. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen._

_Tessoh told me calmly, "I noticed you were whirling that hoe well in the fields yesterday." That was all he said, and he handed me the weapon. When I found out that it was called a Ryuusei-sui… a 'meteor-bell', I almost choked up again, but I ignored the feeling._

_I was the second boy that Tessoh and Chama had recruited to start the group of Basara. But it was only weeks later that, when we reached our tenth member, I had my first raid. _

"_Scare them out of their homes." That was Chama's order._

_I didn't know how I could do that when I was barely strong enough to outmatch Koh. _

"_Use your weapon," Chama encouraged me. But my weapon fell heavy about my waist, and the balls dragged on the ground. My hip ached for weeks carrying those. "You're strong enough to do it. C'mon… just burst into those houses. Avoid hurting anyone, but if they get in your way, you do it. Just don't kill… get it?"_

_He said it as if it was the simplest thing in the world. Go in the house. Make a mess. Drive the families out. Chama, Tessoh, and the rest would go in. Steal food. Steal anything._

"_Why are we doing this?" I asked stupidly, and he only sighed with frustration, and pushed me from the shadows of our hiding place. _

_I looked at the first house, and swore that I would never be able to burst through that thick thing without stumbling, getting hurt, getting captured, and possibly getting killed. I clutched the ryuusei-sui in my hands, and charged through the front door, half-yelling for effect, half-yelling with terror, as I knocked down the door. One of the heavy iron balls swung from my wrist and landed to break the back of a wooden chair. _

_An elderly woman screamed with fright, but when she saw me, her expression intensified into one of anger. There were a couple of adults in the same room who had turned to me with furious faces, and fists clenching and heading my way. It was only then that I really understood that no matter how tough I had looked or acted with these new weapons, it didn't take away the fact that I still looked twelve to everyone else. _

_Fear overcame me, and the next thing I knew, I was wielding the heavy metal balls around as best as I could just so they would not get near me. I broke the floors, shattered the windows, split furniture, anything that I could do to distance myself from them. I was dead scared. I was as scared as that time the soldiers threw fire into my living room, and my parents rushed to get me out of the house and into the shed. I had never seen my parents after that. _

_As a matter of fact, what I had done reminded me a lot of that night I had lost everything I had ever cared about. The destruction of most of this family's properties was similar to the destruction of mine. It seemed strange, and perhaps a little evil, but when I was breaking things, I felt that what happened to me was justified. I felt that destroying their house was like gaining mine in return, because if I could not have one, others shouldn't either. If Basara stole their food and weapons, I felt like I would no longer be hungry and afraid anymore. If I killed one of them…_

_There was a lot of yelling, and screaming, and I was doing basically half of it. I roared at the people who were trying to get to me, and they bellowed back in return. In a matter of minutes, they vacated the ruins that used to be their home, leaving me and my two iron spheres inside. But I chased them, because that was what Chama told me to do. I charged outside, dragging the heaviness of my weapon, and the heaviness of the whole act with me. The first family wandered off into town, screaming for help, screaming as a warning. By the time I was about to chase out another family from their homes, I discovered that most of the villagers have already gone out of their huts anyway. _

"_It's just a boy…" I heard someone say. "He's just a little kid." I stopped in my tracks._

"_What's wrong with him?" They were whispering._

"_I think he's gone crazy."_

_Koh had said exactly the same thing when I chased his daughters and wife around the field, threatening to kill them with the hoe. _

"_He's just a trouble maker."_

"_No, he's crazy!"_

"_You're right… he looks a little bit wrong in the head."_

"_Yeah… the poor kid should be spared of his misery. We should do something."_

"_We need to get the hell away from him. He's dangerous. Look at him! He looks insane."_

"_Shunkaku!" I whirled around to find Tessoh glaring at my paralyzed form, and I realized that the raid had failed._

_I was reprimanded harshly for that mistake. My job was to continue vacating the village houses, but stopping like that made the villagers too aware of our presence for something that had to be a surprise attack._

_Following our narrow escape, Tessoh scolded me about my actions. "What were you doing there? Why were you just standing?" _

"_I told you ten thousand times!" I rolled my eyes heavenward, frustrated that he could just not take my answer reasonable enough. "I wasn't ready for it. Chama Lee told me to get the people out of their houses, but by the time I got out of the first one, they were all outside anyway! What else was I supposed to do?"_

"_Think about that!" he yelled. "When our plan fails, you don't just stand there, and do nothing!"_

"_I wasn't told about Plan B!" I yelled back. "What else could have I done? You know, they were all thinking I was crazy!"_

"_What are you talking about?" he stopped pacing back and forth in the tent, and stared down at me._

"_Didn't you hear them? They were all calling me insane!"_

"_So?" a rather amused smiled began to appear on his angry face. I thought it looked weird._

"_What do you mean, 'so'? Don't you know how they treat crazy people here? They beat the devils out of them!" _

_With that response, both Chama and Tessoh burst out laughing. They didn't say anything else, but they didn't need to. I stood up from where I was sitting on the ground, and ran from their tent. I ran out of the camp, until the mountainous rocks disappeared and the ground underneath my feet turned soggy and deep brown. I ran into the woods nearby, and for the first time in a long, long while, I bawled like a baby._

_I was not crazy. Maybe I was just special. But I wasn't crazy. _


	6. Six

I pretended that I was special, and that perhaps I had the gift of seeing spirits.

Tonight, ghosts of Amiboshi and Lady Yui were inviting me to play 'murder in the dark' with them. I imagined they were ghosts because I didn't know what else they could be.

"I don't want to…" I whispered to nobody in particular, as if I was already engaged in the conversation. My room was dark during the nights; the moonlight never shone through my windows, probably afraid of me too. Maybe it thought that I didn't deserve any light. It thought that the dark suited me well.

I looked to the side of my room to the door, just in case there was someone monitoring me. When I first came to the hospital, they monitored me twenty-four seven to observe my behaviour. They were watching me less often now, but they were still doing it. It unnerved me.

"We can't play," I said to the dark again.

There were reasons why we couldn't, of course. There were only three of us, and only three major roles in the game: the murderer, the investigator, and the victim. Wouldn't the murder be obvious then? There was no point.

Oh, but wait… I forgot. Let me tell another one of my secrets: there was another person here.

I called him 'my other self', but I didn't know much about him.

When my doctor discovered him months ago, he was overjoyed. "This boy has a dissociative identity disorder!" he had declared triumphantly, as if all of a sudden I became a circuit that closed. And worked. However, it was not much later that he found out that it wasn't really my case. He told me that there was something very strange about the other boy… that he was independent of this world.

"It's like… he is dormant most of the time," he tried to explain it to me one time. "But then he remembers things… certain memories that is so strong and significant to him that it overpowers him, and he, in your body, re-enacts these memories. That's what I think, anyway."

That confused me like hell, but since hearing that, I had figured out a few things. One was that I couldn't remember what happened during my 'phases' because that other boy took over my body and my brain. That seemed obvious enough. Two was that the doctors were having a hard time figuring _him_ out, because he would not respond to anything that they would do or say. He lived in an imaginary world, I suppose. One with where an Amiboshi and a Lady Yui existed. Sometimes, I liked to play with the idea that those three had a complicated relationship, perhaps a love triangle. From what I have heard, Lady Yui was my other self's lover, and Amiboshi was his brother. I came up with random little stories like how Lady Yui and Amiboshi were having an affair secretly, when she was betrothed to my other self. He was a prince, and Amiboshi was only his half brother, and he did not qualify for the throne. And yet Lady Yui was infatuated with him, because… well, because…

Meh! Liked it mattered much. I didn't know how they really tied into such a powerful story that was somehow related to _me_. I hated pondering about these stupid things, because there was nothing I could do to control them anyway. It was like watching politics or sports.

Besides, they weren't even sure whether their prognosis was correct, so why bother? Was there really another boy sharing my body?

Anyway, I had been told that there was another problem. Sometime ago, shortly before I turned sixteen, new 'memories' stopped coming. Instead, my doctor said that I re-enacted the same memories over and over again. In a way, it made it easier for him to observe my behaviour, and analyze what was so important about those events.

My doctor told me just a while ago that he thought the other boy was sick too. Like me… but 'even worse', he added. I asked him what was wrong, but he told me he could not tell me. I was getting pretty tired of all these doctors telling me that I was not right in the head, and refusing to disclose my disorder. I hated it! How was I supposed to know how to fix myself then?

I looked to my side again, the one where the window was, and pretended that Amiboshi and Lady Yui were still waiting for my response.

The thing with playing 'murder in the dark' was that there was only one role that required lying. I didn't want _that_ role. I would not mind if I was the detective or the players who were supposed to stay quiet during the killing. At least I would not be forced to lie.

I lied too much during the trial, enough to nauseate me.

My lawyer told me to do it. He told me to act stupid, clueless, retarded… "You'll be saved that way," was what he said.

The problem with people like me was that my lies were easier to believe, because my truths were strange and incomprehensible. People were always afraid of things that they could not understand. That was why they sent us here; more out of fear than concern, really.

"I don't want to play," I finally said. I decided that I didn't want any of the roles. I didn't want to participate in the game any more. I was tired, mostly of thinking. And I realized that I didn't need to be involved in the game to actually be playing it. This boy and I had always been playing 'murder in the dark'.

And more often than not, he was the one to win.


	7. Seven

_Tomo was just another casualty. He was a convenient one, and I hoped Nakago would be hurt._

_To me, they seemed like they were close acquaintances. I wouldn't go as far as saying friends, because Nakago never had friends. He only had servants… and well, lovers too, but that was besides the point. _

_I did not mind having to kill Tomo. He would have killed my brother, and would have killed me, if I had not done it first._

_It was quite sad to admit that we were so far down the road of mistrust that it became every man for himself now. There was no team. There were no 'Seiryuu Celestial Warriors'. Just each warrior, out for his own goal, and each of us oblivious that we all worked for the same god._

_But that was besides the point too, and the point I was trying to make was I hoped Nakago would get hurt once he learned of Tomo's death. I hoped he would, because I didn't plan on killing any more people just to affect him. It was unfair how he was able to take everything away from me without struggling for it, and I could do nothing to retaliate._

_A few days ago – which was pretty late, now considering about it- I had figured out that it was Nakago who had Basara massacred by Konan soldiers. Yeah, it took me that long. Blame my retarded mind. So slow… always so slow. It hurt to know that I had agreed to work for a man who had robbed me of my second family _and_ my only family left. It was disgusting, and it nauseated me. The guilt was overwhelming, because suddenly, I felt as if I had betrayed everyone I loved. And this was the only way I could redeem myself. Hurt him too._

_Of course, there was only one person who was truly capable of that feat. Lady Yui was awfully precious to Nakago. If she was to disappear, I could only imagine what Nakago would do to the rest of the world. Sometimes I wondered whether he would be so disappointed, so out of hope that perhaps he would just disintegrate. I liked the thought of that. I liked to know that Nakago had a weakness after all. It was nice that maybe there really was a way to make him feel hopeless and lifeless. _

_The problem with that idea was that his weakness happened to be _my_ weakness too. Great, wasn't it? So if anything was ever to happen to Lady Yui, the sad thing was that I probably would crumble faster than Nakago… so fast that I would not have a chance to see him waste away as well. _

_I loved Lady Yui. I loved her so much._

_Lady Yui didn't understand that I was the only one left that she could trust. I was the only one who would protect her solely out of love. I would not even do it out of duty anymore, nor obligation. Just pure, pure love. I was the only one who loved her for who she was, and not her label. I would bet that if she had been any random girl starving on the street, Nakago could care less about her._

_Why could she not see that?_

_Maybe she doubted me. She doubted everyone else, so why would I be an exception?_

_Sometimes, even _I_ questioned just how far I would go to prove how true my love was. And it scared me to think of all the answers, because I didn't think they were strong enough. True, I loved her a lot, but maybe not enough to radically change my personality if she left. Not enough to feed her forgetfulness leaves just so she would be saved of all her pain and trouble. Not enough to hand her over to the Suzaku bastards just so she would not be used as a tool to bear evilness into the world._

_Lady Yui would never be able to see the things that I did for her, and would do for her, no matter how menial. She did not understand what I understood. People like her only believed what they thought was right, and what was easy to believe. But I would never change that about her, because I accepted the fact that she was not perfect. I did not want a flawless Lady Yui. I just wanted Lady Yui._

_Someday, I would prove myself to her. Whether she wanted to believe me was her choice. She had been forced into a lot of things, and I didn't want to force her into another one. That would not be right._

_But who was here to tell me what was right or wrong, now? _

_I missed my brother. The three years that we had been separated were almost unbearable to me, and looked what kind of a person it had made me! And the few days we had before he had been sent off to Konan were not nearly enough to make up for lost time. And today, well…_

_Sure, live in Sairou, live in peace with my brother, why not? Why would I turn down something like that?_

_The thing was, the whole premise of living happily ever after with my brother did not fit in with my idea of this world's scarcity. If I had claimed for myself what I had longed for all this time, I would steal Lady Yui of hers; I would steal my brother of the opportunity to be irresponsible of me. I knew he would still continue to look after me, worry about me, if I had come with him._

_See, after all these years of thievery, I figured it was my turn to sacrifice. It was my turn to give up what I had for those who needed it more. It hurt a little, but it felt liberating. To know I could give up everything I owned for people who were more deserving of them, didn't feel like such a big loss. And once I had rid myself of everything, it was comforting to know that I could not possibly lose anything anymore._

_It was ironic. Now that I possessed nothing, fear had left too, and I for once in my life, I felt invincible. And this great loss all happened because I was fortunate enough to be a Seiryuu seishi. I realized that being a celestial warrior had both damned and saved my life. Maybe I should not hate on Seiryuu too much, after all._


	8. Eight

I would be turning seventeen tomorrow. I wondered if anyone would remember.

Something strange happened the other day. I just finished eating my lunch with some of the other juveniles in the hospital when someone started playing the flute. I didn't know where the flute came from, or if it was just a recording, but I had some strange reaction to it.

Just like that, at its first few notes, I stumbled to the ground, clutching my head. It felt like someone was pounding on it as if they were trying to break a barrier that wasn't even there. Images flashed into my head of people who never existed, things I supposedly had done but never happened, and names that seemed so familiar but I'd never heard.

When the flute playing stopped, I was assisted back to my room to rest.

"How do you feel now?" my doctor asked me. "Still have that migraine you got a couple of days ago?"

I nodded to him, even though I had been pacing back and forth restlessly since he came.

"Have you taken your afternoon medicines?" he said.

I looked over to the table that housed my large cluster of pill bottles. Yes, I had taken my medication. All of the required ones. I had another dozen yet to go before the day was up. They were supposed to 'stabilize' me, because something about me had gone haywire. The doctors didn't know what it was, but something did.

"I need a new prescription," I told him.

"For what?"

"Seems like I'm allergic to flute playing," I answered.

He laughed readily at my bad joke. His cheeks puffed out again, turning a deeper red, like they had always done when he laughed. While he composed himself, I watched the street outside my window. There were no cars today that drove by. If I looked far enough, I would be able to see another highway though. That one was congested, and looked rather polluted. Still, it made me wonder if I would ever be able to drive a car.

"Can I ask you something?"

My doctor cleared his throat and encouraged me to go on.

"What exactly is wrong with me?" I turned back around, and looked at him seriously. I had been known for my passiveness and disinterest in many things. So it surprised me to learn some time ago that many of the nurses had reported that I had strange, chilly stares. I used them to get what I wanted, after learning that it was creeping them out.

He gave a long obvious sigh, and flipped through the yellow pages of the notebook he had always carried. For a while, he was just browsing through it, reading. And when he looked back up, he stared at me sadly. He shook his head, and gave a slight shrug with his broad shoulders.

"I don't know," he whispered. "I don't know."

"Why not?" I demanded, and walked over to him. I sat on my bed, and pouted. "You're a doctor. You're supposed to know about these things."

He shook his head again. "It's hard… there are a lot of things that are wrong with you, but… you see, you show signs of different disorders… multiple personality disorder –like we thought initially- but then there's borderline, bipolar… _lots_ of things. I can go on. But there is never quite enough symptoms to pinpoint you to a certain disorder, or even two. Sometimes, they even contradict each other. You're a special case, you know."

I scoffed at the last statement. My mind wandered back to when I was being tried. They had called me a special case too.

There was a survivor in the family that night. He was an older boy, just a little older than me, who was spared his life simply because he was going out with friends the time it happened. He wanted me to go to jail; get a life sentence, perhaps even receive a death penalty. I remembered him crying, sobbing out of grief and anger. He was really furious, and he kept pointing and yelling at me. He called me a psychopath. He scared the hell out of me.

I turned to my doctor. "I think I'm a psychopath," I declared. There, I was making his job easier.

He burst out laughing again. "If only you were so easy to classify!"

"Am I? A psychopath, I mean. You know… many people think so." I pushed the fact further.

"Like I said," he explained again. "Sure, many people might think so, and there are a few qualities that may seem like it. But the fact that you're antisocial, cheeky, and perhaps even violent are not enough to back that up. As far as I've observed, you are quite a sincere person… feel a wide range of deep emotions. And mind you, I'm not trying to insult you, but I'm afraid your mind is too average to be considered psychopathic!" he laughed again.

"So why would I kill a family I don't even know?" I challenged him, remembering the words of the girl with yellow hair.

"Well, did you?"

"I don't know… I don't remember what happened."

He stood up and patted me on the back. "Look, I won't be able to tell you what kind of crimes you've committed. Only you know what they are, and if you've forgotten, then nobody will know until you remember."

I weighed the words inside my head, and hoped that my next question would be answered the way I wanted to hear it. My doctor, though it seemed absurd, was the only person I had learned to trust even for the slightest bit. He was, after all, the only person I had been constantly around with for more than a year.

"Do you… do you think that I did it?"

He looked at me, and smiled sadly. "You know… I think you're a sweet boy." I knew he avoided the question.

"Do you think it was the other boy that did it, then? My other self?"

"It's possible." He sat back down, opened up his notebook again, and skimmed through it. "After all, he seems to have no clue whatsoever of the things that go on in this world. If he was remembering the murder of some other people… you know. But I'm not sure. Sometimes that other boy could be awfully sweet and kind. Do you remember that time I told you about Amiboshi?"

"Yeah, yeah…" I said quickly. I didn't want to hear a story about Amiboshi, or about Lady Yui yet again. I knew all the memories my other self had acted out; I knew each of them by heart now, and they made no sense to me at all. "Is _he_ a psycho then?"

My doctor stared at me with wide eyes. "With that kind of bond with his brother and priestess? Are you kidding? Psychopaths are incapable of deep, lasting relationships! They suffer terrible poverty in the emotion department," he chuckled again with his wording. "You should hear the way you sound when you declare your love for your priestess!"

I wanted to throw water in his face. That was not me. I would never declare my love for any imaginary girl.

"Would I ever meet him?" I asked again.

It intrigued me to know if it was possible that his memories and mine would merge, so that I knew what it was like to be him, and he like me. It was strange, because after everything that he had put me through, I wondered what it would be like to know him. I wondered what he thought about and why. I wondered what he felt, if he could feel anything at all. I was curious to know what it was like to be _him_. I wanted to know what happened to him, and if that would be any indication of what would become of me. After all, he was the very reason why I was not normal like everyone else. Would I receive the same fate as him?

My doctor must have seen my contemplation and told me, "You're a very lucky boy, don't you know?"

Yes, I knew that. I've thought about it before. Often enough to realize that, yes, I was better off than where I had been before. And considering where that was, calling myself lucky was an understatement.

Before I came to this place, the world could not offer me the security I needed. See, I had a feeling that everything that had happened to me was none of my doing, but they were caused by things, people, or events of long before my time. The sad thing about the past was that it was always catching up with us.

My present situation was not my fault. I didn't design these things to happen to me. They happened because two people out there decided to bring me into the world, but could not afford to keep me for whatever reason; they happened because my foster care failed to find me suitable parents and a loving home; they happened because someone out there decided to put another boy in my body, as if there weren't enough bodies to go around for each soul.

The truth was, I was alive only to pay for someone else's mistakes. And being accused of murder, whether I really did it or not, was my final punishment.

But it saved me. It might have been hard to go through all those, but it saved me because now, I am no longer responsible to pay for others. I ended up here, in this place, where the first time since I could ever remember, I felt safe. I was secure. Nobody could harm me here. It may seem weird, but this was possibly the best life I could ever hope for.

"I know," I nodded to him. "I _am_ lucky."

He stood up, smiling. He tucked some loose pages into his notebook, before putting the chair he had dragged beside my bed back in front of the table where it belonged. "Good," he said to me, smile widening. "I just wanted you to know that."

He was about to leave, when he turned back to me. "Oh, I won't be here tomorrow, as you know. So I might as well greet you an advanced happy birthday." From his coat pocket he took out a small box, wrapped with gold cellophane with a red bow hastily taped on top. He reached out to drop it on my bed.

"For me?" I asked stupidly. I went over to pick it up. The feel of the smooth wrapping, and the glittery bow, and the small box was unfamiliar to my hands. The gift itself was unfamiliar to me.

"Of course, for you! Who do you think I'm giving it to?" he chuckled lightly, and turned to go.

"Wait! One more question," I called out. "I know I've never cared to ask before, but do you happen to know the name of my other self?"

"Suboshi," he answered.

I nodded. "Thank you."

* * *

AN: Well, there you go. I can't believe this took me three months to make! But I did put a lot of effort into it. I just wanted to explore the idea of what can happen to a reincarnation of a celestial warrior; most reincarnation stories had normal modern seishis. But I thought about the other effects of having been reincarnated, and how these past memories can also be destructive to a new life. And I chose Suboshi because… well, because he's the not the most sane seishi around, and because he's the only one I really write about. Hehe.

A few notes:

-The criminal justice system I based this on is Canadian; if you see any mistakes or confused about anything, tell me, and I'll look it up/ change it

-B.S. stands for Bu Shunkaku, just in case you guys hadn't figured it out. Hehe... it's his real name, and I guess it was just a bad coincidence.

-No, the murdered family in this story is not Taka's, just in case you're wondering. That would be horrible of me to put Tamahome in the same place twice. It was just some random family.

-Suboshi's mental disorder is not defined… I tried to base some of his actions on actual symptoms, but the effects of the reincarnation is pretty much fictional

Anyway, you can find more notes about the story on my profile page, as I do with every story.


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